One of the earliest innovators in the realm of high-performance computing was Gaspard Clair François Marie Riche de Prony. In 1791―as David Alan Grier tells it in his book, When Computers Were Human―de Prony, a middle-aged civil engineer, was asked by the newly instated revolutionary government of France to create a detailed set of trigonometric [...]

Flying atomic subways from the twenty-third century: how the new Steeles West station will look. What is this? Is it: a. an underground moon base; b. a strange Japanese children’s TV programme; c. two vacuum-cleaner attachments in a pistol duel, or; d. the new design for Steeles West Station on the Spadina subway extension? The [...]

Every Saturday at noon, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today. Roy Thomson, Baron Thomson of Fleet, photographed by Gordon W. Powley, 1945. Archives of Ontario, C 5-1-0-113-2. As he neared his sixtieth year, Roy Thomson had reached a crossroads. The newspaper [...]

In her ambitious new book, The Walkable City (Véhicule Press, 2008), Mary Soderstrom writes: “The walkable city, the oldest kind of city is going to be the key to whatever success we have in meeting the challenges of the future.” After all, until the early nineteenth-century people moved only as fast and as far as [...]